Tomato Cage

| edwinridout


Elspeth designed this tomato cage for Sandy’s birthday, and I helped her and Tim put it up last weekend, though not quite all the chicken wire is up yet, and it still needs a door at the back. Maybe next year some of the tomatoes will come to us instead of the squirrels.

Famous last words

| edwinridout

This is the creature which fell out of my shoe this morning after I got back to the house with the paper, aware of a growing pain on the top of my right foot. Its body is only two or three millimeters wide, but the sore spot on my foot is about an inch wide, where the skin is red and feels clammy. The soreness reminds me of severe sunburn I had on the tops of my feet at the beach once, years ago, but the entire foot has an ache also. Initially I thought it was a spider, but now I think maybe not. Perhaps it got into my shoe from the compost heap, where I had been to dump lawn clippings Thursday evening. [Update, Sunday morning: I added the third photo, since I was still alive, and the insect is still dead. My foot seems to be recovering — less red, less achy, less itchy, and the very minor swelling has now gone.]

Saw two operas Thursday night

| edwinridout

Sneaked over to the opposition last night to see two Puccini operas done by Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival at the new opera house in Manassas. See below to hear the most famous aria from the second opera, Gianni Schicchi.

Of the two, I liked the first one the best: Il Tabarro (the cloak), a love story tragedy with a grisly ending. The set was most of the front part of a cargo ship, moored at a dock on the Seine. It was very well done, and I enjoyed all aspects of it. None of the music was familiar to me, but I could see the supertitles screen and I had read the synopsis, so I was able to follow the story well. Here’s a clip from Il Tabarro on the Castleton Festival website.

Intermission must have been a good half hour, so it had to be around 10pm before the second one started, and I’d been up since 4am. This was in the new Hylton Performing Arts Center at the Manassas campus of George Mason University, only 45 minutes’ drive from home. My first thought was that I’d got the worst seat in the house, but it was good in parts. I did have to hang onto the rail most of the way through the first opera for fear of falling four storeys into the orchestra pit. On the other hand, disregarding the altitude, nobody was closer to the action except the conductor (LM himself). I could see his score, although as my new glasses have not yet arrived, I couldn’t recognize the printing as music. My seat was a real chair, very comfortable, not bolted to the floor, and quite private, being hidden from the rest of the audience by a pillar. I guess that’s why it was box seating.

But that comfort began to be a bit of a problem about a half hour into Gianni Schicchi and I caught myself dozing off more than once. There are a lot more characters in this one, and I wasn’t able to keep them straight nor keep up with the supertitles. This is a farce about greed, performed in I suppose fifties dress, and I found it too silly. I did not sleep through that famous aria though. You can hear Kiri te Kanawa sing that on YouTube: O mio babbino caro

Mayapple, aka Mandrake

| edwinridout


This is the fruit of one of the woodland plants seen in bloom Easter Saturday as below. Although it was trampled and left lying flat on the path by the dogs weeks ago, the fruit itself has remained green and possibly continues to grow.
Thanks to Nick for providing the identification. I’m renaming this post from “unnamed fruit”. References: altnature.com,
Wikipedia